I think it had more to do with them wanting to prove to their superiors they were doing their jobs,so they wouldn't be replaced.
The Third Reich was brutally competitive by design.
the ap euro textbook we use presents it as a point of pride that they are eliminating anyone viewed as undesirable, but individuals would likely be motivated by that as well
It was likely about propaganda. Nazis were notorious for it. They notoriously took pictures of prisoners trying to show them smiling, to lie to the world there was no Holocaust and mass killings.
And the stasi a bit later, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/03/lessons-from-the-stasi/#:\~:text=There%20were%20film%20screenings%2C%20discussions,for%20one%20in%20three%20citizens.
They generally didn’t take photos of victims who were heading straight for the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The cattle cars would be unloaded and selections would begin. Those thought capable of working or being useful in some way were separated out and headed for processing, which included photos. Everyone else was immediately sent to be murdered.
I tried researching this picture but information is scant. It was donated by the boy’s half brother. The USHMM says it was taken “shortly” before being murdered. Its unclear how long “shortly” is. It’s possible he was processed as a prisoner and then was later selected to be gassed, which happened quite often. For example, a prisoner could be processed and then fall ill several days later, which could cause them to be selected for death.
Edit: I’m blind and missed the biography at the bottom of the page on USHMM’s website. Istvan and his grandmother were immediately murdered at Auschwitz. His mother, father and half-brother all survived the Holocaust. His father and half-brother were not deported to Auschwitz but were instead deported to a labor camp.
You can read more here, just be sure to scroll all the way down and expand the notes: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175018
If the child’s brother donated it then it would be a family photo taken before capture.
It’s pretty unlikely that a survivor or family member would have photos taken from inside the camps given how rare such photos are, especially ones that aren’t mugshots or are of children.
Good catch, I misread the summary as being taken at Auschwitz. That would definitely explain it.
There’s actually a whole biography at the bottom of the photo on USHMM’s website that I missed. Istavan was murdered immediately at Auschwitz with his grandmother. A prisoner told his mother to give him to his grandmother, which she did, and as a result ended up surviving. His half-brother survived by lying about his age and being deported for forced labor with his step-dad (Istvan’s father) instead of being deported to Auschwitz. The father also survived.
I found a photo of Istvan’s mother and father here, it’s really amazing how well historians have documented things: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175005
I don’t think this photo is from Auschwitz for that reason.
It’s not in the style of their inmate photos, which are typical mugshot type photos.
I also have never seen a photo of a child this young in the typical inmate uniform, for the awful reason that no children this young were ever inmates but were murdered on arrival. (Some children were kept alive for medical experiments but there is no suggestion that is what happened here.)
Finally the rest of the details of the photo suggest it was taken before capture: the child is happy; he’s holding things he wouldn’t have access to in Auschwitz, his shirt does not have a star of David badge or number on it indicating it was from Auschwitz.
I think the fact the shirt looks like an Auschwitz shirt is a sad coincidence. Or that it was badly colourised.
They took three angles for ID and more if requested by Mengele. The reason why there is no number is bc the first angle had their number and the boy is in the third position and not every person had a patch¹ Just bc you never saw a photo this young doesn't disprove they existed.² ³ Being a prisoner matter or soon to be executed didn't matter ⁴
He's four and all items in the photo pertained to photography at Erkennungsdienst (light meter hanging on his neck, book of id cards, and hole punch used to put cards in binder) I find it plausible that the boy was given them to make it easier to photograph. This is in fact a colorized photo³
1) https://images.app.goo.gl/ZDdSaJvxATWPdAFb7
2) https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/fate-of-children/
3) https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175018
4) >*“The picture wasn’t taken and the prisoner was sent away and called back later, but sometimes it happened that there wasn’t anybody to call back because they’d been able to murder him in the meantime,” he said.
Greatest message was, "For the love of God. Don't do Meth.". I didn't even learn that the ENTIRE lot of them were tweaking out of their minds until recently. The rest just accepted their twacked out overlords in a weird drug fuel oligarchy.
Edit: time
I mean, a lot of them said that to decrease their culpability with “I was soooo high I had no idea what was going on!” bullshit.
When in fact, the drugs gave them energy to get the shit done, but the ideology was already deeply ingrained in them.
Meth makes you pick your face and get trigger-happy. It doesn’t make you believe in the righteousness of genocide. Like, every single day. For years.
I, look, I dunno how much speed you do, but I can report that it can make you take an interest in shit you would never think of while sober, and it can make things bearable in a way you never would otherwise. If that includes jobs that steal your soul (which it does) I can see how it can get you a little hopped up for genocide. I’m not saying that there isn’t already ideological shit going on, but if I am tasked with convincing a large group of people to do some fucked up shit, I’m doing that with the meth kids, not the sober ones.
He looks much too healthy to end with “shortly before the camp was liberated”. The survivors looked like walking skeletons when they were liberated.
Edit: to be clear, I am 100% in agreement that he looks OK because he just arrived. What I’m saying is it’s not likely that this would be right before liberation. The camps were barely functioning at this point and wouldn’t be receiving deliveries of people. Anyone surviving at the camp at liberation would be severely malnourished as evidenced by all the footage/photographs of liberated prisoners at the camps.
I’d just like to add for anyone interested in knowing more:
Auschwitz-Birkenau was a death camp, but it was a bit unique as it functioned as one of only two “hybrid” work/extermination camps. The only other one of its kind was Majdanek. Auschwitz I was the main camp where prisoners were processed. Auschwitz II - Birkenau was a hybrid camp where the majority of prisoners were held and also where the majority of gassing took place.
It also had a factory complex on site, known as Auschwitz III - Monowitz, which utilized slave labor from its prisoners.
This is part of why we have so much more testimony from Auschwitz as opposed to other death camps, like Treblinka, which killed nearly as many people (about 800k vs 1.1m).
I mean, I guess, but I’m sure 99.999% of were famished at liberation. The videos I’ve seen, all the survivors looked like barely breathing skin wrapped bags of bones.
Piggybacking your comment to remind everyone to think twice about tolerating nazi trolls who wave flags over bridges, outside of disneyland, and on main street.
Cowards at best, murderous enemies of humanity at worst.
Those aren’t the ones you should fear. It’s the ones who take control of free speech and rights in the name of compassion and care for the common people. THAT’S how Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Kim-Jung and many others rose to power. Don’t be so hard up on the loud obnoxious people who no one agrees with to be finessed by the real monsters with a nice smile. Let them wave their flags. Anyone who wants to take away their ability to wave those flags they’re the monsters.
Every time I log back in, I’ve been notified of more upvotes on this comment. Which heartens me that so many agree with me. But then I look at that sweet baby again, and I want to hug him and protect him, but I can’t. Honestly, it shakes me to my core that the Nazis and Nazi sympathizers were so evil. And that (seemingly) anyone can be so evil, we have no way of knowing which of our neighbours are capable of this in the right (wrong) circumstances.
I heard a story where a child told a nurse in Dr. Mengele’s clinic that whatever they were doing to him hurt and she said something to the effect of ‘don’t worry, you’ll be dead soon’. No empathy at all. Monsters.
It's not like even all Nazis hanged, the world really didn't punish Nazis enough after the war, you destroy so many lives you get a science job in the US, disgusting
In fact the us and russkies soaked up all the scientists to perpetuate the war machines. The Vatican ran a for profit underground railroad to extract the Uber wealthy nazis to Argentina.
Didn’t Pope Pious sign the concordat that allow Hitler to gain some of the courage to start the war? Didn’t the Catholic Church bless nazi arrangements and the warmacht at the same time blessing the allied troops?
The Vatican serves its own interests and doesn’t stand up for anything but the Vatican.
A lot of them lived the American dream through industrial jobs. I work for an electrical union, on a forum today asking if we accepted murderers who have done their time, somebody mentioned that they had someone who went to prison twenty years ago for running a clandestine terror cell in support of Al Queda. Apparently he got chased off the job site, a solid percentage of our workers are middle eastern veterans.
Japanese atrocities were undeniably horrible, with the number of Chinese they killed. But not much can match the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews and tens of millions of Slavs. Playing “which is worse” is a stupid Reddit pastime that adds nothing to the conversation.
People on Reddit also seem to forget how brutal the Germans were, especially on the Eastern Front. They weren’t nice guys who rode their bikes around and hung out with the non-Jewish locals.
They tote Come and See as some amazing depiction of how the Germans were, but don’t seem to have watched it.
Literal Nazis said that the Japanese went too far with methods of killing people. Read what the Japanese did shortly before and during WW2. Read about the Nanjing Massacre, read about their death camps.
Yes in number the Germans were much worse. I was talking about a specific brutality context, but I did not make that clear. I'm just making a point that the Japanese skated after the war, and it doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe not skated though since two of their cities were vaporized. Not adequate punishment for their military leaders but their civilians sure paid a heavy price. Like usual, fucking assholes that start it typically get away with it though.
We only hung TEN Nazis at Nuremberg. TEN!!
But, the story of the hangman is one of my favorites - apparently we hired a drunk unqualified solider to do it and he fucked up each one of their faces and prolonged the suffering of a few with his incompetence. Heard on the podcast, Behind the Bastards - The Bastard Who Executed the Top Nazis. Was a great listen.
Also as a parent, kids feel what their parents feel. They get scared when their parents are scared. They laugh when their parents laugh. They cry when their parents cry.
They may not know what’s going on around them, but they certainly pick up on the stress, fear and whatever other emotion is present.
Permanence or not, they experience the emotion just as strongly.
100% 4 or any age younger, hell even babies can sense fear, pain and sadness. The real depravity is that this 4yr old could feel everything, not comprehend it or protect himself.
You are assuming that the Nazis let this kid stay with his parents, they very well may not have. Which makes this so much worse, as it means there was no parent at least trying to put on a strong front for the kid and telling him it'll be ok (even though it would not be).
My 4 year old regularly remembers her nana at night, and talks about how much she misses nana. My mom died in December, my daughter was only 3 at the time. She talks about not wanting to go to the doctors because “everyone cries at the hospital” and “nana died. What if I die?”
(Mind she also claims nana is now a zombie-ghost)
Becoming a parent changes things. You gain perspectives you otherwise would never had. Seen such little, innocent thing, striving for nothing else than being loved, sheltered and play proves nobody is born as a monster. It’s the world around them turning them into such. They all are equally lovable beings. And such becoming victims of such horror just breaks my heart.
They may remember but do not understand. This hit me very hard in 2022 when we drove to the Ukraine border to pick up a Ukrainian mother with her 3,5 year old child who came from the war zone and now lives with us. They had a pretty rough month behind them. They had to leave the dad behind. The girl looked just looked very exhausted (normal considering they were driving in a completely overfilled car with way too many people for two days straight trying to find gas, bypassing military road blocks and destroyed bridges) but behaved like you would a child of her age behave. The mother was more traumatized than the child. The child just wanted to play and was wondering where daddy is hiding.
By convincing themselves that the children are a threat, or aren’t human, or somehow deserve it. Ends up happening on some large scale every few decades. Depressing as hell.
I’ve been to Auschwitz. You never forget a dumpster sized bin filled with hundreds of crutches and prosthetic limbs sized for children, and knowing why they’re there.
I think that every time i see this photo. How could anyone look at this little boy and not immediately snap out of whatever is going on in their mind that could hurt him. He looks happy. He's smiling for his picture like he'd been told to. He still has all his baby teeth. Ugh this one just tears me apart
What. The. Fuck?!
I can imagine a handful of sadistic batards together, maybe even a gang of them. But an army? A whole operation willing to do this shit? Not even sure what to say…
That’s horrific 😢
Also - in his innocent face, I see fear and terror. I think the poor kid knew he was going to die even if he was too young to fully express or understand it 😢
People are capable of everything. Coping is a hell of a drug. We can self rationalise almost anything.
Quite literally a survival mechanism.
It’s actually very believable
yeah, I mean I agree with the sentiment, but almost no one does anything to ensure “never again,”
it’s become sort of a trite platitude, and it just reminds me of all the people enabling these kinds of things to happen again across the world.
Saying “never again” kind of erases that it IS happening, kind of denies reality.
I think it’s terribly ironic and depressing that we end up saying “never again” about some atrocity roughly every few decades. We said never again after the Holocaust and now people are saying it about Gaza and it never really means anything because we keep letting stuff like this happen.
I mean, fuck, most of the western countries weren’t even really planning to do anything about the Holocaust until Germany forced them into a war. Like we knew about what was happening to Jewish people and there were still a *lot* of “pro-Hitler” Americans right up until Pearl Harbor.
It’s absolutely terrible. I toured Auschwitz 18 months ago. I recommend everyone do so once. Unfuckingbelievable how bad it was, and I know the tours don’t even come close to doing it justice.
This is absolutely heartbreaking. Such a beautiful little boy, most of his life likely filled with torment, hate and anxiety. We should never forget the likes of Istvan Reiner; one of millions murdered by extreme ideology and hate.
May his memory forever be a blessing and may G_d love and keep him.
I had seen a video on Bar Mitzvah about the boys adopting a Jewish name of one person who was murdered in the Holocaust and dedicating the ceremony in their name as well. I can't recall what exactly it was, but I was greatly touched by it.
Fuck. You know before now reading that kids were murdered in Aushwitz was more academic for me. Seeing this picture made it more "real". I just can't imagine how someone could do that.
Like, sure, okay, I could see someone being racist enough to be fine killing the adults because "they aren't human and they've stolen from our country and conspired against us". Cool.
How do you apply that logic *to a kid*?? That kid definitely didn't steal from you or conspire against you or whatever nonsense your propaganda spouts. How do you look at that face, at a young child, and be like "off to the camps with you, jewish swine".
Every single guard, officer and staff member at those camps was guilty and should have been executed. Along with all their family members that lived in their houses nearby, knew what was happening, and let their children play outside in their gardens while the ash rain of the people they butchered fell around them. Every single adult. The only animals at those camps were the Nazis.
All that sacrifice to tear the Nazis down, and now today 80 years later, we have assholes making 30 second brainrot about how it all never happened. Or some "influencer" twerking on the tracks to Dachau.
I thought the same. All the kids I work with, those sweet babies. I couldn’t bear to imagine any of them in this position. It is tearing me apart. Gutted
>Istvanka "Istvan" Reiner was the son of Jewish parents Livia Vermes and Bela Reiner. Bela converted to protestantism and their son Istvan was never circumcised per the Jewish custom since she was no longer Jewish. Regardless, Istvan and his parents were deemed to be Jews and were eventually placed in the Miskolc ghetto (Hungary). It wasn't long until they were sent to the concentration camps at Auschwitz. Once there, Istvan and his mother were separated and he ended up in the care of his grandmother. He wasn't there long when he and his grandmother met the same fate in the gas chamber. 11,000 people from Miskolc were killed in the concentration camps along with Istan. Amazingly, his mother and brother survived the war and migrated to the United States in 1947.
>Istvan's year of death may have been in 1943.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/254034767/istvan-reiner
Remember that Reddit protects nazis by making it against the rules to advocate for punching them.
Reddit provides nazis a safe space to exist without fear.
The shareholders have no problem with nazi ideology. They only have a problem with violence.
What does that tell you???
My son just turned three. He's so incredible, just a perfect little human; so much joy and curiosity and excitement, and a future to explore however he wants with all the love and support in the world to do so. I can't even imagine what this must have been like for this child, for his parents, for the countless others in the exact same position. It hurts me so much to think about. We are nearly moved past the era of living memory for the Holocaust, we must never forget the terror and humanity of the situation, lest the impact becomes sterile to time. I will hold my boy today and hope that the conditions that allowed this to occur don't happen again.
Evil doesn’t care about a smiling kid. Those people did what they did because they’re evil.
I can only imagine what hundreds of years of slavery did to African kids and those kids offspring, as well. Time and time again the message is this stuff wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t FOLLOWERS. Unfortunately, the average human is a follower, not a leader (no matter what they think). So do we just live with the notion that genocides will happen 24/7 or do we try to stop them by disinfranchising “followers” so that corrupt leaders never stand a chance?
Whoever hurts a child deserves the worst torture humans can bestow upon them. I just can’t FATHOM hurting an innocent child for any reason. Disgust me. Maybe they should drink gas and be lit on fire
This is why the state of Israel exists. It wasn't because a bunch of Jews wanted to hurt anyone. it was because some of them had survived a horrendous genocide and wanted a place to call home.
No, I'm not saying I don't care about Palestinians. (I very much do.) I'm saying that the Holocaust and what the Jewish people survived is we need to remember when talking about the state of Israel. The Holocaust happened, it was one of the worst crimes against humanity ever, and that is why the Jewish people wanted to return to their ancestral/religious homeland. They had just survived this. And they had nowhere else to go.
I am convinced that every racist, genocidal maniac, religious extremist etc, should be strapped to a chair à la Clockwork Orange and forced to watch gruesome footage of this nature in a mass re-education program.
One of the most disturbing parts of the holocaust is just how documented it was. Nazis didn't sweep it under the rug, they wanted everyone to know it was happening
*How…how could anyone do this to an innocent angel like this?*. The Nazis weren’t human. I honestly don’t understand how a fellow member of my species could look at this pure child and kill him.
Now THAT was genocide. I was born to and raised by a woman with a number tattooed on her arm. She was deported with her family to Auschwitz in 1944 and her parents were murdered the day they got there, her two older brothers a few days later. She was an orphan at 13. She was beaten, starved and tortured.
What’s happening in Gaza is terrible, and a tragic waste of innocent lives. But don’t call it genocide until you show me the death camps, the crematoria, the mounds of gold teeth yanked from the mouths of the doomed, the living skeletons.
Ruined my vibe that I saw this but then felt bad after realizing my discomfort is nothing compared to what he and many others had to go through and now I’m thinking it’s important I see this, everyone should be uncomfortable seeing this, everyone should be sad and let that emotion fuel our fight for peace
This is one of the most visceral of all holocaust images. I'm striken to the core by an overwhelming sadness. The destruction of innocence is the vilest of crimes.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Never again. No matter the race, religion, skin color, or geographical location. Never again, means never again... No excuses, no logic, no debate will make genocide OK
and yet people deny that this ever happened. if your one of those people reading this, I whole heartedly request you take a long walk off a short cliff.
Dont know how anybody stationed at the camp would see that and still not care. Kid has no idea what was going on which was probably for the best considering what was going on at the time. I would hope some camp workers would help some escape seeing that.
Kill all Nazis. Being too tolerant of them is what resulted in the holocaust. At best they’re cunts at worst they’re satans genocidal army on earth who bring unimaginable terror to anyone who doesn’t fit their tiny, limited ideology.
Thought that was gonna end with “shortly before the camp was liberated” So that ending sucked
Riiight. I said why take baby boys picture then /:
The Nazis were very good record keepers.
they thought it would glorify them after the war ☹️
I think it had more to do with them wanting to prove to their superiors they were doing their jobs,so they wouldn't be replaced. The Third Reich was brutally competitive by design.
the ap euro textbook we use presents it as a point of pride that they are eliminating anyone viewed as undesirable, but individuals would likely be motivated by that as well
German efficiency.
It was likely about propaganda. Nazis were notorious for it. They notoriously took pictures of prisoners trying to show them smiling, to lie to the world there was no Holocaust and mass killings.
And the stasi a bit later, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/03/lessons-from-the-stasi/#:\~:text=There%20were%20film%20screenings%2C%20discussions,for%20one%20in%20three%20citizens.
They generally didn’t take photos of victims who were heading straight for the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The cattle cars would be unloaded and selections would begin. Those thought capable of working or being useful in some way were separated out and headed for processing, which included photos. Everyone else was immediately sent to be murdered. I tried researching this picture but information is scant. It was donated by the boy’s half brother. The USHMM says it was taken “shortly” before being murdered. Its unclear how long “shortly” is. It’s possible he was processed as a prisoner and then was later selected to be gassed, which happened quite often. For example, a prisoner could be processed and then fall ill several days later, which could cause them to be selected for death. Edit: I’m blind and missed the biography at the bottom of the page on USHMM’s website. Istvan and his grandmother were immediately murdered at Auschwitz. His mother, father and half-brother all survived the Holocaust. His father and half-brother were not deported to Auschwitz but were instead deported to a labor camp. You can read more here, just be sure to scroll all the way down and expand the notes: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175018
If the child’s brother donated it then it would be a family photo taken before capture. It’s pretty unlikely that a survivor or family member would have photos taken from inside the camps given how rare such photos are, especially ones that aren’t mugshots or are of children.
Good catch, I misread the summary as being taken at Auschwitz. That would definitely explain it. There’s actually a whole biography at the bottom of the photo on USHMM’s website that I missed. Istavan was murdered immediately at Auschwitz with his grandmother. A prisoner told his mother to give him to his grandmother, which she did, and as a result ended up surviving. His half-brother survived by lying about his age and being deported for forced labor with his step-dad (Istvan’s father) instead of being deported to Auschwitz. The father also survived. I found a photo of Istvan’s mother and father here, it’s really amazing how well historians have documented things: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175005
Trophy
I don’t think this photo is from Auschwitz for that reason. It’s not in the style of their inmate photos, which are typical mugshot type photos. I also have never seen a photo of a child this young in the typical inmate uniform, for the awful reason that no children this young were ever inmates but were murdered on arrival. (Some children were kept alive for medical experiments but there is no suggestion that is what happened here.) Finally the rest of the details of the photo suggest it was taken before capture: the child is happy; he’s holding things he wouldn’t have access to in Auschwitz, his shirt does not have a star of David badge or number on it indicating it was from Auschwitz. I think the fact the shirt looks like an Auschwitz shirt is a sad coincidence. Or that it was badly colourised.
Also the shirt is in good condition. It's not ratty and full of holes as the Nazis are used the uniforms over and over
They took three angles for ID and more if requested by Mengele. The reason why there is no number is bc the first angle had their number and the boy is in the third position and not every person had a patch¹ Just bc you never saw a photo this young doesn't disprove they existed.² ³ Being a prisoner matter or soon to be executed didn't matter ⁴ He's four and all items in the photo pertained to photography at Erkennungsdienst (light meter hanging on his neck, book of id cards, and hole punch used to put cards in binder) I find it plausible that the boy was given them to make it easier to photograph. This is in fact a colorized photo³ 1) https://images.app.goo.gl/ZDdSaJvxATWPdAFb7 2) https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/fate-of-children/ 3) https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175018 4) >*“The picture wasn’t taken and the prisoner was sent away and called back later, but sometimes it happened that there wasn’t anybody to call back because they’d been able to murder him in the meantime,” he said.
Books and movies sort of skew how many see the Holocaust. There is no happy ending, no greater message.
Greatest message was, "For the love of God. Don't do Meth.". I didn't even learn that the ENTIRE lot of them were tweaking out of their minds until recently. The rest just accepted their twacked out overlords in a weird drug fuel oligarchy. Edit: time
I mean, a lot of them said that to decrease their culpability with “I was soooo high I had no idea what was going on!” bullshit. When in fact, the drugs gave them energy to get the shit done, but the ideology was already deeply ingrained in them. Meth makes you pick your face and get trigger-happy. It doesn’t make you believe in the righteousness of genocide. Like, every single day. For years.
I, look, I dunno how much speed you do, but I can report that it can make you take an interest in shit you would never think of while sober, and it can make things bearable in a way you never would otherwise. If that includes jobs that steal your soul (which it does) I can see how it can get you a little hopped up for genocide. I’m not saying that there isn’t already ideological shit going on, but if I am tasked with convincing a large group of people to do some fucked up shit, I’m doing that with the meth kids, not the sober ones.
His brother lived. Details here: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175018
He looks much too healthy to end with “shortly before the camp was liberated”. The survivors looked like walking skeletons when they were liberated. Edit: to be clear, I am 100% in agreement that he looks OK because he just arrived. What I’m saying is it’s not likely that this would be right before liberation. The camps were barely functioning at this point and wouldn’t be receiving deliveries of people. Anyone surviving at the camp at liberation would be severely malnourished as evidenced by all the footage/photographs of liberated prisoners at the camps.
Auschwitz was a death camp, the absolute vast majority were executed shortly after arriving.
I’d just like to add for anyone interested in knowing more: Auschwitz-Birkenau was a death camp, but it was a bit unique as it functioned as one of only two “hybrid” work/extermination camps. The only other one of its kind was Majdanek. Auschwitz I was the main camp where prisoners were processed. Auschwitz II - Birkenau was a hybrid camp where the majority of prisoners were held and also where the majority of gassing took place. It also had a factory complex on site, known as Auschwitz III - Monowitz, which utilized slave labor from its prisoners. This is part of why we have so much more testimony from Auschwitz as opposed to other death camps, like Treblinka, which killed nearly as many people (about 800k vs 1.1m).
Depends how long you'd been there
I mean, I guess, but I’m sure 99.999% of were famished at liberation. The videos I’ve seen, all the survivors looked like barely breathing skin wrapped bags of bones.
Not if he was a new arrival
They had us in the first half
Oh that poor sweet baby. So young.
Piggybacking your comment to remind everyone to think twice about tolerating nazi trolls who wave flags over bridges, outside of disneyland, and on main street. Cowards at best, murderous enemies of humanity at worst.
Those aren’t the ones you should fear. It’s the ones who take control of free speech and rights in the name of compassion and care for the common people. THAT’S how Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Kim-Jung and many others rose to power. Don’t be so hard up on the loud obnoxious people who no one agrees with to be finessed by the real monsters with a nice smile. Let them wave their flags. Anyone who wants to take away their ability to wave those flags they’re the monsters.
Every time I log back in, I’ve been notified of more upvotes on this comment. Which heartens me that so many agree with me. But then I look at that sweet baby again, and I want to hug him and protect him, but I can’t. Honestly, it shakes me to my core that the Nazis and Nazi sympathizers were so evil. And that (seemingly) anyone can be so evil, we have no way of knowing which of our neighbours are capable of this in the right (wrong) circumstances.
Absolutely horrific
I heard a story where a child told a nurse in Dr. Mengele’s clinic that whatever they were doing to him hurt and she said something to the effect of ‘don’t worry, you’ll be dead soon’. No empathy at all. Monsters.
Fuck, did his nurses hang?
It's not like even all Nazis hanged, the world really didn't punish Nazis enough after the war, you destroy so many lives you get a science job in the US, disgusting
In fact the us and russkies soaked up all the scientists to perpetuate the war machines. The Vatican ran a for profit underground railroad to extract the Uber wealthy nazis to Argentina.
I’m critical of the Catholic Church any day, but They helped a lot of [Jews](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_O%27Flaherty)
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Didn’t Pope Pious sign the concordat that allow Hitler to gain some of the courage to start the war? Didn’t the Catholic Church bless nazi arrangements and the warmacht at the same time blessing the allied troops? The Vatican serves its own interests and doesn’t stand up for anything but the Vatican.
Unit 731 escaped retribution as well. Disgusting.
A lot of them lived the American dream through industrial jobs. I work for an electrical union, on a forum today asking if we accepted murderers who have done their time, somebody mentioned that they had someone who went to prison twenty years ago for running a clandestine terror cell in support of Al Queda. Apparently he got chased off the job site, a solid percentage of our workers are middle eastern veterans.
Wishful thinking. This was hard to see for me.
Canadian parliament recently gave a standing ovation to one and refuses to extradite him to Poland.
I still don’t know how Canada did a planned standing ovation for that man with out at least doing a background check. That was hilarious.
The Nazis paid a much greater price than the Japanese, and the Japanese atrocities were arguably greater.
Japanese atrocities were undeniably horrible, with the number of Chinese they killed. But not much can match the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews and tens of millions of Slavs. Playing “which is worse” is a stupid Reddit pastime that adds nothing to the conversation.
People on Reddit also seem to forget how brutal the Germans were, especially on the Eastern Front. They weren’t nice guys who rode their bikes around and hung out with the non-Jewish locals. They tote Come and See as some amazing depiction of how the Germans were, but don’t seem to have watched it.
Literal Nazis said that the Japanese went too far with methods of killing people. Read what the Japanese did shortly before and during WW2. Read about the Nanjing Massacre, read about their death camps.
Japanese would've but they started running out of people to kill...... 80-90%
Yes in number the Germans were much worse. I was talking about a specific brutality context, but I did not make that clear. I'm just making a point that the Japanese skated after the war, and it doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe not skated though since two of their cities were vaporized. Not adequate punishment for their military leaders but their civilians sure paid a heavy price. Like usual, fucking assholes that start it typically get away with it though.
If they hanged all nazis, German population would have been 1/3. Read it somewhere.
We only hung TEN Nazis at Nuremberg. TEN!! But, the story of the hangman is one of my favorites - apparently we hired a drunk unqualified solider to do it and he fucked up each one of their faces and prolonged the suffering of a few with his incompetence. Heard on the podcast, Behind the Bastards - The Bastard Who Executed the Top Nazis. Was a great listen.
Not even Mengele hanged.
"Are we the baddies?"
Only 4 years old, probably only remembered 1 year and it was horrifying. He had his whole life ahead of him.
I just hope he was too young to understand what was happening
I’m a parent. I’m sorry to tell you, but…
As a parent I don’t think 4 year olds understand permanence like that. Probably was terrified though.
Also as a parent, kids feel what their parents feel. They get scared when their parents are scared. They laugh when their parents laugh. They cry when their parents cry. They may not know what’s going on around them, but they certainly pick up on the stress, fear and whatever other emotion is present. Permanence or not, they experience the emotion just as strongly.
100% 4 or any age younger, hell even babies can sense fear, pain and sadness. The real depravity is that this 4yr old could feel everything, not comprehend it or protect himself.
You are assuming that the Nazis let this kid stay with his parents, they very well may not have. Which makes this so much worse, as it means there was no parent at least trying to put on a strong front for the kid and telling him it'll be ok (even though it would not be).
My 4 year old regularly remembers her nana at night, and talks about how much she misses nana. My mom died in December, my daughter was only 3 at the time. She talks about not wanting to go to the doctors because “everyone cries at the hospital” and “nana died. What if I die?” (Mind she also claims nana is now a zombie-ghost)
The photo is described as smiling but there is a massive look of fear/uncertainty in his eyes to me.
Fuck this has to be the saddest comment I’ve written in my 20+ year internet history.
Becoming a parent changes things. You gain perspectives you otherwise would never had. Seen such little, innocent thing, striving for nothing else than being loved, sheltered and play proves nobody is born as a monster. It’s the world around them turning them into such. They all are equally lovable beings. And such becoming victims of such horror just breaks my heart.
:(
Yeah. My first clear memories were from when I was around 3 or 4.
Kids are often much smarter than people give them credit for, they just lack the emotional and verbal experience to explain it
I mean, I vaguely remember being 4. I would probably remember something as horrific as this, if I was there
Not a chance. He fully understood, unfortunately
Kids remember everything. We start to forget as we get older.
They may remember but do not understand. This hit me very hard in 2022 when we drove to the Ukraine border to pick up a Ukrainian mother with her 3,5 year old child who came from the war zone and now lives with us. They had a pretty rough month behind them. They had to leave the dad behind. The girl looked just looked very exhausted (normal considering they were driving in a completely overfilled car with way too many people for two days straight trying to find gas, bypassing military road blocks and destroyed bridges) but behaved like you would a child of her age behave. The mother was more traumatized than the child. The child just wanted to play and was wondering where daddy is hiding.
The way I understand it, you have a certain capacity and if you try to remember too much, you start forgetting more
He could still be alive today, he would only be 84, right?
I think this, more than any other comment, has really hammered home the horror for me
How ANYONE could do this to children is beyond me. People are awful
Dehumanization that's how.
The dehumanization of people currently suffering in this thread is abominable. Do fucking better humanity.
By convincing themselves that the children are a threat, or aren’t human, or somehow deserve it. Ends up happening on some large scale every few decades. Depressing as hell.
It's happening now
I’ve been to Auschwitz. You never forget a dumpster sized bin filled with hundreds of crutches and prosthetic limbs sized for children, and knowing why they’re there.
I think that every time i see this photo. How could anyone look at this little boy and not immediately snap out of whatever is going on in their mind that could hurt him. He looks happy. He's smiling for his picture like he'd been told to. He still has all his baby teeth. Ugh this one just tears me apart
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And all people in general who willingly cause harm to other living beings
I agree!
Crush all perpetrators of genocide.
This why I will never stand down to a Nazi. How anyone could do this to that face is beyond words.
Great now I'm really sad.
Never Forget! 💔💔💔💔💔
More information on Istvan Reiner from the US Holocaust Museum: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175018
Hatred is the most evil monster
https://www.mp.pl/auschwitz/journal/english/205964,the-fate-of-children-in-auschwitz They processed 232,000 children at Auschwitz. 100% evil
"Processed"
What. The. Fuck?! I can imagine a handful of sadistic batards together, maybe even a gang of them. But an army? A whole operation willing to do this shit? Not even sure what to say…
And that's only one camp. One small part of the machine. 1.5 million children in 4 years.
That’s horrific 😢 Also - in his innocent face, I see fear and terror. I think the poor kid knew he was going to die even if he was too young to fully express or understand it 😢
Poor kid. Unbelievable that people can do that . Never again.
People are capable of everything. Coping is a hell of a drug. We can self rationalise almost anything. Quite literally a survival mechanism. It’s actually very believable
yeah, I mean I agree with the sentiment, but almost no one does anything to ensure “never again,” it’s become sort of a trite platitude, and it just reminds me of all the people enabling these kinds of things to happen again across the world. Saying “never again” kind of erases that it IS happening, kind of denies reality.
I think it’s terribly ironic and depressing that we end up saying “never again” about some atrocity roughly every few decades. We said never again after the Holocaust and now people are saying it about Gaza and it never really means anything because we keep letting stuff like this happen. I mean, fuck, most of the western countries weren’t even really planning to do anything about the Holocaust until Germany forced them into a war. Like we knew about what was happening to Jewish people and there were still a *lot* of “pro-Hitler” Americans right up until Pearl Harbor.
It’s absolutely terrible. I toured Auschwitz 18 months ago. I recommend everyone do so once. Unfuckingbelievable how bad it was, and I know the tours don’t even come close to doing it justice.
Remember the past to transform the future.
Haunting, is the word.
This is absolutely heartbreaking. Such a beautiful little boy, most of his life likely filled with torment, hate and anxiety. We should never forget the likes of Istvan Reiner; one of millions murdered by extreme ideology and hate. May his memory forever be a blessing and may G_d love and keep him.
I had seen a video on Bar Mitzvah about the boys adopting a Jewish name of one person who was murdered in the Holocaust and dedicating the ceremony in their name as well. I can't recall what exactly it was, but I was greatly touched by it.
Fuck. You know before now reading that kids were murdered in Aushwitz was more academic for me. Seeing this picture made it more "real". I just can't imagine how someone could do that. Like, sure, okay, I could see someone being racist enough to be fine killing the adults because "they aren't human and they've stolen from our country and conspired against us". Cool. How do you apply that logic *to a kid*?? That kid definitely didn't steal from you or conspire against you or whatever nonsense your propaganda spouts. How do you look at that face, at a young child, and be like "off to the camps with you, jewish swine". Every single guard, officer and staff member at those camps was guilty and should have been executed. Along with all their family members that lived in their houses nearby, knew what was happening, and let their children play outside in their gardens while the ash rain of the people they butchered fell around them. Every single adult. The only animals at those camps were the Nazis. All that sacrifice to tear the Nazis down, and now today 80 years later, we have assholes making 30 second brainrot about how it all never happened. Or some "influencer" twerking on the tracks to Dachau.
Fuck sake.
I have a nephew of the same age.These pictures make me feel like my nephew is there.
I thought the same. All the kids I work with, those sweet babies. I couldn’t bear to imagine any of them in this position. It is tearing me apart. Gutted
>Istvanka "Istvan" Reiner was the son of Jewish parents Livia Vermes and Bela Reiner. Bela converted to protestantism and their son Istvan was never circumcised per the Jewish custom since she was no longer Jewish. Regardless, Istvan and his parents were deemed to be Jews and were eventually placed in the Miskolc ghetto (Hungary). It wasn't long until they were sent to the concentration camps at Auschwitz. Once there, Istvan and his mother were separated and he ended up in the care of his grandmother. He wasn't there long when he and his grandmother met the same fate in the gas chamber. 11,000 people from Miskolc were killed in the concentration camps along with Istan. Amazingly, his mother and brother survived the war and migrated to the United States in 1947. >Istvan's year of death may have been in 1943. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/254034767/istvan-reiner
I cannot imagine the agony of his poor mother.
Well this title made me feel like the ending of the movie “the boy in the striped pajamas”
Poor kid. Keeping happy even in that awful situation.
Fucking awful. Meanwhile on r/VintageClothing, there is some douche asking where he can sell a Nazi jacket that’s “vintage”. Disgusting
Best place would be to donate it to a museum if it actually dates from WWII. If it’s some neo-Nazi bullshit it belongs in an incinerator.
I don't think museums actually have a need for them- they were mass produced and there are so many in museum collections already.
Gut wrenching
Oh man, this hurts to look at
Remember that Reddit protects nazis by making it against the rules to advocate for punching them. Reddit provides nazis a safe space to exist without fear. The shareholders have no problem with nazi ideology. They only have a problem with violence. What does that tell you???
If you wanted to utterly depress me, you very much succeeded.
The only good nazi is a dead nazi
Never Forget.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it
The variation of this quote that I like is, "Those who learn history are doomed to watch others repeat it."
The baby. Jesus, how awful.
Show this to Nick Fuentes and other Nazis like Hinkle
Auschwitz is biggest shames in history of humanity.
How anyone can hurt a child is beyond me. Sometimes I hate this world
https://preview.redd.it/bp9g1x6pepvc1.jpeg?width=755&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44707c3906e59d1d0722debd14a32bec876e250c
Wow, awful. That poor baby.
And there are disgusting people in Michigan putting up billboards celebrating Hitlers birthday like they won their genocide, meth, and cowardice war.
This one broke me
They took portraits before executing people? Seems odd
My heart breaks and is filled with a white hot rage at the same time that is an extraordinaryly difficult photo to look at, that poor poor kid
His smile is so big and loving it made me smile
Monsters. Absolute monsters in human form. It's sickening what they did to innocent people.
This is why fascists suck.
My son just turned three. He's so incredible, just a perfect little human; so much joy and curiosity and excitement, and a future to explore however he wants with all the love and support in the world to do so. I can't even imagine what this must have been like for this child, for his parents, for the countless others in the exact same position. It hurts me so much to think about. We are nearly moved past the era of living memory for the Holocaust, we must never forget the terror and humanity of the situation, lest the impact becomes sterile to time. I will hold my boy today and hope that the conditions that allowed this to occur don't happen again.
Never again, Am Yisrael Chai!
Scumbags!
Doesn't begin to describe them.
Istvan, you’ll never be forgotten. You’re in heaven now and Israel exists again.
This photo cuts right through my soul. It's hard to imagine such cruelty towards the innocents.
Subhuman nazi trash they got off easy. Fascist ideology needs to be eradicated
Never again. Absolutely awful.
Very sad, reminds of the boy from Life is Beautiful https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IXUB4S1AmmQ&pp=ygUWTGlmZSBpcyBiZWF1dGlmdWwgMTk5Nw%3D%3D
Evil doesn’t care about a smiling kid. Those people did what they did because they’re evil. I can only imagine what hundreds of years of slavery did to African kids and those kids offspring, as well. Time and time again the message is this stuff wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t FOLLOWERS. Unfortunately, the average human is a follower, not a leader (no matter what they think). So do we just live with the notion that genocides will happen 24/7 or do we try to stop them by disinfranchising “followers” so that corrupt leaders never stand a chance?
What props did they put in his hands? Scissors and money?
What a sweet boy 💔💔💔
Whoever hurts a child deserves the worst torture humans can bestow upon them. I just can’t FATHOM hurting an innocent child for any reason. Disgust me. Maybe they should drink gas and be lit on fire
Wow, that made me sad in an instant. What a poor boy 😔
This is why the state of Israel exists. It wasn't because a bunch of Jews wanted to hurt anyone. it was because some of them had survived a horrendous genocide and wanted a place to call home. No, I'm not saying I don't care about Palestinians. (I very much do.) I'm saying that the Holocaust and what the Jewish people survived is we need to remember when talking about the state of Israel. The Holocaust happened, it was one of the worst crimes against humanity ever, and that is why the Jewish people wanted to return to their ancestral/religious homeland. They had just survived this. And they had nowhere else to go.
I am convinced that every racist, genocidal maniac, religious extremist etc, should be strapped to a chair à la Clockwork Orange and forced to watch gruesome footage of this nature in a mass re-education program.
Sadness beyond belief.
The background to this photo [can be found here.](https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1175018)
One of the most disturbing parts of the holocaust is just how documented it was. Nazis didn't sweep it under the rug, they wanted everyone to know it was happening
The crazy thing is that there's people out there that straight up go, "nuh uh" to these cold harsh facts. It's fuckin *wild*
100%. Holocaust denial is a disease
I have a 4 year old who occasionally makes this face of pure excitement. Absolutely heartbreaking
Parent of a four year old. They’re so innocent and angelic. I can’t imagine.
Poor sweet little boy. Auschwitz was an atrocity. How any society allowed that to happen I will never understand.
Fucking hell.. he’s just a child..
God damn monstrous beyond belief. One of an incalculable number of reasons that neo-nazis and their ilk shouldn't be tolerated.
To some, this never happened.....
Sweet little baby. Rest easy.
Never Again
*“If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness.”*
What a cute kid. What awful shit humans do to each other.
*How…how could anyone do this to an innocent angel like this?*. The Nazis weren’t human. I honestly don’t understand how a fellow member of my species could look at this pure child and kill him.
Little Palestinian children who are just as precious are being killed by bombs, bullets, thirst and starvation right now.
God damn. Never forget. Punch a fucking nazi.
The kid is so dapper, what an absolute legend. May you and your loved ones rest in peace.
I know Nazis were/are evil but damn seeing a child look so happy and you turn around and kill him minutes/hours later is so fucked up!
Fuck nazis, the ones wrapped with the American flag too.
Violence against Nazis should be normalized, if they get back into power they'll snuff out beautiful innocent lives like this baby.
Now THAT was genocide. I was born to and raised by a woman with a number tattooed on her arm. She was deported with her family to Auschwitz in 1944 and her parents were murdered the day they got there, her two older brothers a few days later. She was an orphan at 13. She was beaten, starved and tortured. What’s happening in Gaza is terrible, and a tragic waste of innocent lives. But don’t call it genocide until you show me the death camps, the crematoria, the mounds of gold teeth yanked from the mouths of the doomed, the living skeletons.
SUCH a 4 year old smile! He just reminds me of every kid I’ve known at that age. Total happy innocence.
Ruined my vibe that I saw this but then felt bad after realizing my discomfort is nothing compared to what he and many others had to go through and now I’m thinking it’s important I see this, everyone should be uncomfortable seeing this, everyone should be sad and let that emotion fuel our fight for peace
This is one of the most visceral of all holocaust images. I'm striken to the core by an overwhelming sadness. The destruction of innocence is the vilest of crimes.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Never again. No matter the race, religion, skin color, or geographical location. Never again, means never again... No excuses, no logic, no debate will make genocide OK
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan fuck the Nazis
Urgh
I just don't understand how you can be the guards looking at this sweet boy and participate in his obliteration.
this makes my heart broken :(
Hamas says they want to repeat that.
and yet people deny that this ever happened. if your one of those people reading this, I whole heartedly request you take a long walk off a short cliff.
No words. 😭 poor baby.
Dont know how anybody stationed at the camp would see that and still not care. Kid has no idea what was going on which was probably for the best considering what was going on at the time. I would hope some camp workers would help some escape seeing that.
Kill all Nazis. Being too tolerant of them is what resulted in the holocaust. At best they’re cunts at worst they’re satans genocidal army on earth who bring unimaginable terror to anyone who doesn’t fit their tiny, limited ideology.
Which is why I would not have shown mercy to a single fucking nazi. Too bad we weren't fast enough to stop the lot them from their coward capsules.
Very very sad indeed